“We are the faithful ones, whose souls will be saved.” (Hebrews 10:39b NLT)
Today we’ll look at two more words that those who follow Jesus often use, but can easily be misunderstood. They are “faithful” and “saved/salvation.”
In Matthew 24:45 Jesus says: “A faithful, sensible servant is one to whom the master can give the responsibility of managing his other household servants and feeding them.” The context of Jesus’ words is a warning that He will one day return without announcement, and only those who are “faithful” will be ready to receive Him. He used this common illustration because it would have been familiar to His audience.
As we read this story today it might be easier to think of it something like this: “A trustworthy and reliable employee is one to whom the owner of the company gives responsibility to manage his other employees and give them supervision in his absence.” That can be a picture of the mindset of a person who is serving Jesus. Our faithfulness is illustrated and demonstrated as we follow the directives of our Owner, Jesus, until He returns or calls us home in death.
“Faithful” here carries the same meaning as you might expect – trustworthiness, dependability, honesty, and reliability, and those certainly carry over into our walk with Jesus. But there is some uniqueness to the term “faithful” when used in reference to a follower of Jesus.
In the New Testament “faithful” identifies one who is not only trustworthy but trusts in God’s promises; one who is not only compliant with the Lord’s directives, but is convinced that Jesus has been raised from the dead, that He is the Messiah, the Christ, the only begotten of God, and the sole Author of salvation.
Being “saved” or having “salvation” as it relates to our walk with God can be thought of in the context of a rescue from certain death. Imagine, for example, you are stranded in the ocean. There’s no land in sight in any direction, you have no resources by which you can save yourself. Your only hope is for someone to find you before you die. Suddenly, you hear a helicopter, and with what little strength you have left, you wave and shout. The helicopter hovers over you and a rope is thrown down and soon you see a man climbing down to pull you from the water and take you to safety.
While no illustration is perfect, that essentially describes what Jesus has done for us and what being saved or having salvation looks like.
As human beings, we are born with a sin nature, inherited by our earthly ancestor, Adam. That nature gives us inclinations that make it easy for us to desire to be self-sufficient, self-seeking, self-dependent, in short, to love ourselves and sinning more than we love God. We like to believe we don’t have any need we can’t satisfy ourselves. Then death enters the picture. Human beings die!
Because Adam chose to sin, to follow the dictates of his own desire and ignore God’s instruction, he lost the privilege of eternal life and received instead the penalty for his sin, which is death (separation from God).
In a sense, we are all “afloat” in a massive sea of darkness and hopelessness, destined to be forever separated from the Lover of our soul, but in His great grace and mercy, God sent a Rescuer to save us from sin and certain death.
In 1 John 5:11-12 it says: “And this is what God has testified: He has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have God’s Son does not have life.” God opened a way for us to be saved (to have salvation) through His Son, Jesus. In a similar way as a person being rescued from the sea entrusts their life to their rescuer, by faith, we must place our full trust in our only hope of eternal life, the Lord Jesus. Please don’t believe you can ever be good enough to earn your way to heaven. That’s like believing you can swim the ocean to save yourself from drowning.
Click on the link below to learn what it means to allow Jesus to rescue you and to receive His free gift of eternal life.
https://hutchcraft.com/the-bridge-to-god
Blessings, Ed 😊
Walking With Jesus 